In this episode, I’m sharing my perspective on story ownership and posing the question: who actually interpreted your story the first time it happened? Because I promise you, it wasn't the you sitting here today. It was a younger, less-equipped version of you, making meaning with zero tools and zero perspective. And you've been carrying that meaning around like it's fact ever since. No hate, no shame. It just deserves acknowledgement.

I’m walking you through a reframe you can do on your own story right now, plus why so many women hit a full reckoning in their 40s and 50s (hint: your soul stops letting you ignore her).

So be sure to have something to take notes because you’ll want to take these ideas into your next reflective journaling, aka narrative writing session.

You'll take away:

• Why you're not responsible for how someone receives your story, and why that means you can stop overthinking how you share yours
• How to spot when people-pleasing is really about outsourcing your worthiness to everyone but you
• A simple practice for reframing an old story so it stops feeling like a fact and starts feeling like something you get to rewrite
• Why the hardest part isn't the awakening itself. It's living out who you become after it (so you're not blindsided when it gets messy)
• A first look at my new Rewrite Room — a small Rewritten group starting in August

Mentioned:

• Al-Anon daily readers: Courage to Change and Hope for Today
• The Saint Francis Prayer
• Rewritten (DM on IG me @jessicagraham.storycoach if you want in on the Rewrite Room)

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♥ Connect with me on Instagram: @jessicagraham.storycoach

♥ Start the process with a FREE Name The Narrative Session.

♥ Sign up for the FREE monthly gathering for ambitious women in business, Stories in Action.

♥ Book a call to discuss narrative coaching.

About me: I help female founders and ambitious women rewrite the stories that are keeping them stuck in outdated identities.

This week I'm getting into one of my favorite things to talk about: MANIFESTATION. It used to make me cringe because I thought it was new-age woo-woo talk. Now if you bring it up, I'm like, girl, sit down, let's get into it.

I unpack what manifestation actually means to me now versus how I used to see it (hint: it's not just "ask and hope"), and how narrative work supports the manifestation process. I even walk you through scripting, which is a writing practice I teach my Rewriters to help their nervous system believe a bigger story is possible.

This episode is about reclaiming your agency over what you actually want, and why your nervous system — not your vision board — decides what you're ready to receive.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• What manifestation actually means when it's rooted in co-creation with something greater than you AND healing subconcious beliefs
• Why manifestation might be less about calling more in, and more about becoming someone who can recognize, receive, and steward what's already trying to find you
• How the narrative question: Who would I need to be to receive it? works alongside manifestation's question of what am I inviting in
• Why manifesting from a wound (trying to fix, justify, or heal the past) blocks what you're calling in, and what to do instead
• The difference between "going with the flow" and DECIDING, and why deciding is what actually moves things
• An introduction to scripting: A narrative-therapy-informed practice for rehearsing the story your nervous system hasn't learned yet, plus how to try it yourself

If you're ready to start rewriting the stories that are keeping you from receiving what you actually want, Rewritten is the program for you.

Start with a FREE Name the Narrative Session, and let's find the first thread together.

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To Be Magnetic (affiliate)

I mentioned To Be Magnetic, Lacey Phillips' guided meditation practice for subconscious reprogramming. I've used it myself for years and fold a lot of what I teach in Rewritten into it.

👉To Be Magnetic

The Pathway (Payment Plan)

https://login.tobemagnetic.com/a/2147524106/SVMoftp7

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Use the code: JESSICA4930

For 15% off (Disclosure: this ia an affiliate link. I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you)

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♥ Connect with me on Instagram: @jessicagraham.storycoach

♥ Start the process with a FREE Name The Narrative Session.

♥ Sign up for the FREE monthly gathering for ambitious women in business, Stories in Action.

♥ Book a call to discuss narrative coaching.

About me: I help female founders and ambitious women rewrite the stories that are keeping them stuck in outdated identities.

Getting really personal this week and tracing a pattern I just recognized in myself: my instinct to go dismissive after a fallout, wipe the whole thing out, and "keep it moving" instead of actually processing it. I unpack where that pattern came from and why it's been costing me the chance to grieve and reconcile what I've lost.

I share two chapters of my story I needed to reconcile — ten years as a teacher I never fully loved, and years working in the service industry. I talk candidly about the shame I carried around both, and how I'm now able to see the actual skills and lessons I carried forward from each — community-building from the classroom, and a deep drive to help women reclaim their worthiness from my service industry years.

This episode is about the parts of my story I'd been dismissing, minimizing, or hiding, and why nothing I've lived was wasted once I was willing to find the thread.

In this episode:

• The dismissive pattern I just uncovered and why it's not the strength I thought it was
• Reconciling 10 years of a teaching career that I didn't love
• My years working in the seedier side of the service industry and the shame I carried around it
• How love and money wounds mirror each other
• What 12-step recovery taught me about surrender and rewriting old beliefs
• Why every experience I've lived — even the ones that feel shameful or unrelated — has a place in my story

If you're ready to start reconciling your stories — especially the ones that have kept you stuck in shame and dismissal — Rewritten is the program for you.

Start with a free Name the Narrative Session, and let's find the first thread together.

♥ Connect with me on Instagram: @jessicagraham.storycoach

♥ Start the process with a FREE Name The Narrative Session.

♥ Sign up for the FREE monthly gathering for ambitious women in business, Stories in Action.

♥ Book a call to discuss narrative coaching.

About me: I help female founders and ambitious women rewrite the stories that are keeping them stuck in outdated identities.

This one's a shortie but still powerful AF.

This week I ran our first Rewriter's Collective meetup of the month, and it sparked something I couldn't not talk about: taking a story inventory.

If you've been around here for a minute, you know Rewritten is all about tracing your old stories back to where they started, reframing them, and rewriting them into something that actually reflects who you are.

But the heavy lift isn't the awakening. It's the embodying. It's practicing the new story on repeat until it becomes who you are.

In this episode, I'm breaking down:

• What a "story inventory" actually is (and how I stole the concept straight from Al-Anon's Step Four)
• Why "keeping your side of the street clean" might be the most freeing mindset shift you adopt this year
• The daily inventory questions I ask myself — did I tell any lies today, did I say yes when I meant no, am I avoiding a conversation I know I need to have
• Why forgiveness journals deserve just as much real estate as gratitude journals
• The moment I stopped victimizing myself over my relationship with my mom, and what changed when I finally saw her as a human being who was struggling — not just "my mother who should have been ___"
• What I'm actually most proud of (and it’s not what you think)

This episode is a reminder that you can't control other people. You never could.

But you can take radical ownership of your side of the street, and that ownership is where your power lives.

♥ Connect with me on Instagram: @jessicagraham.storycoach

♥ Start the process with a FREE Name The Narrative Session.

♥ Sign up for the FREE monthly gathering for ambitious women in business, Stories in Action.

♥ Book a call to discuss narrative coaching.

About me: I help female founders and ambitious women rewrite the stories that are keeping them stuck in outdated identities.

For months, I chalked up my brain fog, low motivation, and low-grade depression to everything but the real thing. In this episode, I get honest about the middle-of-the-night epiphany that revealed the truth, the exact moment "I hope this happens" turned into "this is happening," and the wild string of manifestations that followed, including winning a ticket to see Cathy Heller in LA three days after I made the decision.

We're talking about:

• Why chronic fatigue and brain fog can sometimes be a symptom of an unaddressed life misalignment, not just a hormone issue
• The difference between hoping for something and deciding it's happening, and why that shift changes your energy
• How codependency recovery reshaped the way I think about "making things happen"
• Why sisterhood and community outside your immediate family isn't optional, it's oxygen
• Why embodiment work needs a container (and a little BTS on The Rewriter’s Collective)

If you've been sitting on a hope you keep swatting away, this is your permission slip to decide instead.

♥ Connect with me on Instagram: @jessicagraham.storycoach

♥ Start the process with a FREE Name The Narrative Session.

♥ Sign up for the FREE monthly gathering for ambitious women in business, Stories in Action.

♥ Book a call to discuss narrative coaching.

About me: I help female founders and ambitious women rewrite the stories that are keeping them stuck in outdated identities.

For the first time on the podcast, I'm inviting one of my Rewriters to share her rewrite with us. Cherie Faus-Smith, a clarity and confidence coach, memoirist, and domestic abuse and melanoma survivor, joins me to share what it was actually like to go through Rewritten after years of therapy that helped, but never quite got her unstuck.

We talk about the difference between processing in a 50-minute session versus having space to actually sit with a memory until it cracks open. Cherie shares how she rewrote her core story of "I'm not believed," how that shift changed her relationship with her parents and her marriage, and how naming her own narrative led directly to the birth of a business shift.

This is a real, unedited conversation about what it looks like when the work actually works.

If any part of Cherie's story resonates, I'd love for you to take the next step: book a free Name the Narrative session, the first step into Rewritten, linked below.

HOW TO CONNECT WITH CHERIE:

Cherie Faus-Smith is a memoirist, survivor, and advocate for women reclaiming their voice. After years of self-abandonment and giving her power away, she found her way back to herself and now helps women in midlife speak up, take up space, and reconnect with who they truly are.

Connect with Cherie Faus-Smith here: https://linktr.ee/cherie.faus.smith

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♥ Connect with me on Instagram: @jessicagraham.storycoach

♥ Start the process with a FREE Name The Narrative Session.

♥ Sign up for the FREE monthly gathering for ambitious women in business, Stories in Action.

♥ Book a call to discuss narrative coaching.

About me: I help female founders and ambitious women rewrite the stories that are keeping them stuck in outdated identities.

Journaling is one of the most powerful tools in my narrative coaching practice, and in this episode, I'm going beyond the "just write in a journal" advice to talk about what's actually happening in your brain and body when you do it.

I've been a journaler since I was a kid. But it wasn't until I started working with women in my Rewritten program, and going through the Al-Anon 12-step process myself, that I really understood why it works, not just that it does.

In this episode, I cover:

• The neuroscience of journaling — what your amygdala and prefrontal cortex are actually doing when you write by hand
• Why handwriting (not typing) slows your thinking in a way that helps you process instead of outrun your thoughts
• How writing externalizes emotional triggers and creates measurable mental distance from painful experiences
• The journaling practices I use personally — including burning ceremonies, resentment writing, and end-of-year reflection
• Why so many women tell me they don't feel safe journaling in their own homes — and what to do about it
• Specific prompts I use with my 1:1 clients in Name The Narrative Sessions to help you identify charged patterns and trace them back to a story

Whether you're brand new to journaling or you've been at it for years and want to go deeper, this episode will change how you think about what's actually happening when you put pen to paper.

Journaling prompts mentioned in this episode:

• What’s been feeling emotionally charged, repetitive, or heavy lately?
• What feels familiar about this experience?
• Where do you see your own choice in this situation?
• What does staying in this loop protect you from?

If you want to explore your own narrative with me, a Name The Narrative Session is a 45-minute guided conversation where we identify what's activating you and trace it back to the story underneath.

♥ Connect with me on Instagram: @jessicagraham.storycoach

♥ Start the process with a FREE Name The Narrative Session.

♥ Sign up for the FREE monthly gathering for ambitious women in business, Stories in Action.

♥ Book a call to discuss narrative coaching.

About me: I help female founders and ambitious women rewrite the stories that are keeping them stuck in outdated identities.

Have you ever made a decision by committee — polling your friends, hiring a coach, following the blueprint — because you just couldn't trust yourself to get it right? Same.

In this episode, I'm getting into the thing that's been coming up again and again in my Rewritten cohort: decision-making. Specifically, why it feels so heavy, and why the answer isn't a better framework — it's a stronger trust muscle.

I talk about:

• Why decisions feel so high-stakes
• The difference between needing advice and outsourcing your self-trust
• Why discernment matters and what it actually means
• Why feeling overwhelmed by a decision is usually a capacity problem, not a discernment problem
• How spaciousness, not productivity, builds the clarity to move forward
• The Elizabeth Gilbert "Big Magic" idea that changed how I think about inspiration
• Why trust is built through messy decisions, not perfect ones
• What to do with the regret when things don't go as planned

This one is for the woman who is circling a decision right now and needs permission to stop waiting for certainty.

You already know more than you think you do. Let's talk about it.

♥ Connect with me on Instagram: @jessicagraham.storycoach

♥ Start the process with a FREE Name The Narrative Session.

♥ Sign up for the FREE monthly gathering for ambitious women in business, Stories in Action.

♥ Book a call to discuss narrative coaching.

About me: I help female founders and ambitious women rewrite the stories that are keeping them stuck in outdated identities.